Conveniently His Princess

Before he could be sure, it was gone, her fathomless eyes glittering with annoyance again. “You mean you’ve looked better than this? Any better and you should be...arrested or something.”

Something warm seeped through his bones, brought that unfamiliar smile to his lips again. “Though I barely give the way I look any thought, you managed what I thought impossible. You flattered me in a way I never was before.”

She grimaced as if at some terrible taste. “Hello? Wasn’t I speaking English just now? Flattering you isn’t among the things I would ever do, even at gunpoint.”

“Sorry if this causes you an allergic reaction, but that is exactly what you did, when I’ve been looking at myself lately and finding only a depleted wretch looking back at me.”

She opened her mouth to deliver another disparaging blow, before she closed it, her eyes narrowing contemplatively over his face.

“Now I’m looking for it. I guess, yeah, I see it. But it sort of...roughens your slickness and gives you a simulation of humanity that makes you look better than your former overly polished perfection. Figures, huh? Instead of looking like crap, you manage to make wretched and depleted work for you.”

He abandoned any pretense of looking through the files and turned to her, arms folded over his chest. “Okay. I get it. You despise the hell out of me. Are you going to tell me what I ever did to deserve your wrath, Kanza?”

When she heard her name on his lips, something blipped in her eyes. It was gone again before he could latch on to it, and she reverted back to full-blast disdain mode. “Give the poor, depleted Pirate an energy bar. He’s exerted himself digging through his hard drive’s trash and recognized me. And even after he did, he still asks. What? You think your transgressions should have been dropped from the record by time?”

“Which transgressions are we talking about here?”

“Yeah, with multitudes to pick from, you can’t even figure out which ones I’m referring to.”

“Though I’m finding your bashing delightful, even therapeutic, my curiosity levels are edging into the danger zone. How about you put me out of my misery and enlighten me as to what exactly I’m paying the price for now?”

Her lips twisted disbelievingly. “You’ve really forgotten, haven’t you?” At his unrepentant yet impatient nod, she rolled her eyes and turned back to the files, muttering under her breath. “You can go rack your brains with a rake for the answer for all I care. I’m not helping you scratch that itch.”

“Since there’s no way I’ve forgotten anything I did to you that could cause such an everlasting grudge...” He paused, frowned then exclaimed, “Don’t tell me this is about Maysoon!”

“And he remembers. In a way that adds more insult to injury. You’re a species of one, aren’t you, Aram Nazaryan?”

Before he could say anything, she strode away, clearly not intending to let him pursue the subject. He could push his luck but doubted she’d oblige him.

But at least he now knew where this animosity was coming from. While he hadn’t factored in that this would be her stance regarding the fiasco between him and Maysoon, it seemed she had accumulated an unhealthy dose of prejudice against him from the time he’d been briefly engaged to her half sister. And she’d added an impressive amount of further bias ever since.

She slammed another filing cabinet shut. “This damn file isn’t here.” She suddenly turned on him. “But you are. What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

So it had finally sunk in, the improbability of his stumbling in on her here in his sister’s office.

Having already decided to throw her off, he said, “I was hoping Johara would be working late.”

She frowned. “So you don’t know that she and Shaheen are throwing a party tonight?”

“They are?” This had to be his best acting moment ever.

She bought it, as evidenced by her return to mockery. “You forgot that, too? Is anything of any importance to you?”

He approached her again with the same caution he would approach a hostile feline. “Why do you assume it’s me who forgot and not them who neglected to invite me?”

“Because I’d never believe either Johara or Shaheen would neglect anyone, even you.”

When he was a few feet away, he looked down at her, amusement again rising unbidden. “But it’s fully believable that I got their invitation and tossed it in the bin unread?”

She shrugged. “Sure. Why not? I’d believe you got a dozen phone calls, too, or even face-to-face invitations and just disregarded them.”

“Then I come here to visit my sister because I’m disregarding her?”

“Maybe you need something from her and came to ask for it, even though you won’t consider going to her party.”

He let out a short, delighted laugh. “You’ll go the extra light-year to think the worst of me, won’t you?”

“Don’t give me any credit. It’s you who makes it exceptionally easy to malign you.”

Hardly believing how much he was enjoying her onslaught, he shook his head. “One would think Maysoon is your favorite sister and bosom buddy from the way you’re hacking at me.”

The intensity of her contempt grew hotter. “I would have hacked at you if you’d done the same to a stranger or even an enemy.”

“So your moral code is unaffected by personal considerations. Commendable. But what have I done exactly, in your opinion?”

Her snort was so cute, so incongruous, that it had his unfettered laugh ringing out again.

“Oh, you’re good. With three words you’ve turned this from a matter of fact to a matter of opinion. Play another one.”

“I’m trying hard to.”

“Then el’ab be’eed.”

This meant play far away. From her, of course.

Something he had no intention of doing. “Won’t you at least recite my charges and read me my rights?”

She produced her cell phone. “Nope. I bypassed all that and long pronounced your sentence.”

“Shouldn’t I be getting parole after ten years?”

“Not when I gave you life in the first place, no.”

His whole face was aching. He hadn’t smiled this much in...ever. “You’re a mean little thing, aren’t you?”

“And you’re a sleazy huge thing, aren’t you?”

He guffawed this time.

Wondering how the hell this pixie was doing this, triggering his humor with every acerbic remark, he headed back to Johara’s desk. “So are we done with your search mission? Or going by the aftermath of your efforts, search-and-destroy operation?”

“Just for that,” she said as she placed a call, “you put everything back where it belongs.”

“I don’t think even Johara herself can accomplish that impossibility after the chaos you’ve wrought.”

She flicked him one last annihilating look, then dismissed him as she started speaking into the phone without preamble. “Okay, Jo, I can’t find anything that might be the file you described, and I’ve gone through every shred of paper you got here.”

“You mean we did.” Aram raised his voice to make sure Johara heard him.

An obsidian bolt hit him right between the eyes, had his heart skipping a beat.

He grinned even more widely at her. He had no doubt Johara had heard him, but it was clear she’d pretended she hadn’t, since Kanza’s wrath would have only increased if Johara had made any comment or asked who was with her.

And he’d thought he’d known everything there was to know about his kid sister. Turned out she wasn’t only capable of the subterfuge of setting him and her partner up, but of acting seamlessly on the fly, too.

Kanza was frowning now. “What do you mean it’s okay? It’s not okay. You need the file, and if it’s here, I’ll find it. Just give me a better description. I might have looked at it a dozen times and didn’t recognize it for what it was.”

Kanza fell silent for a few moments as Johara answered. He had a feeling she was telling Kanza a load of ultra-convincing bull. By now, he was 100 percent certain that file didn’t even exist.

Kanza ended the conversation and confirmed his deductions. “I can’t believe it! Johara is now not even sure the file is here at all. Blames it on pregnancy hormones.”

Hoping his placating act was half as good as Johara’s misleading one, he said, “We only lost an hour of turning her office upside down. Apart from the mess, no harm done.”

“First, there’s no we in the matter. Second, I was here an hour before you breezed in. Third, you did breeze in. Can’t think of more harm than that. But the good news is I now get to breeze out of here and put an end to this unwelcome and torturous exchange with you.”

“Aren’t you even going to try to ameliorate the destruction you’ve left in your wake?”

“Johara insisted I leave everything and just rush over to the party.”

So she was invited. Of course. Though from the way she was dressed, no one would think she had anything more glamorous planned than going to the grocery store.

But it was evident she intended to go. That must have been Johara and Shaheen’s plan A. They’d invited him to set him and Kanza up at the soirée. And when he’d refused, Johara had improvised find-the-nonexistent-file plan B.

Kanza grabbed a red jacket from one of the couches, which he hadn’t noticed before, and shrugged it on before hooking what looked like a small laptop bag across her body.

Then, without even a backward glance at him, she was striding toward the door.

He didn’t know how he’d managed to move that fast, but he found himself blocking her path.

This surprised her so much that she bumped into him. He caught an unguarded expression in those bottomless black eyes as she stumbled back. A look of pure vulnerability. As though the steely persona she’d been projecting wasn’t the real her, or not the only side to her. As though his nearness unsettled her so much it left her floundering.

A moment later he wondered if he’d imagined what he’d seen, since the look was now gone and annoyance was the only thing left in its place.

He tried what he hoped was the smooth charm he’d seen others practice but had never attempted himself. “How about we breeze out of here together and I drive you to the party?”

“You assume I came here...how? On foot?”

“A pixie like you might have just blinked in here.”

“Then I can blink out the same way.”

“I’m still offering to conserve your mystic energies.”

“Acting the gentleman doesn’t become you, and any attempt at simulating one is wasted on me since I’m hardly a damsel in distress. And if you’re offering in order to score points with Johara, forget it.”

“There you go again—assigning such convoluted motives to my actions when I’m far simpler than you think. I’ve decided to go to the party, and since you’re going, too, you can save your pixie magic, as I have a perfectly mundane car parked in the garage.”

“What a coincidence. So do I. Though mine is mundane for real. While yours verges on the supernatural. I hear it talks, thinks, takes your orders, parks itself and knows when to brake and where to go. All it has left to do is make you a sandwich and a cappuccino to become truly sentient.”

“I’ll see about developing those sandwich-and cappuccino-making capabilities. Thanks for the suggestion. But wouldn’t you like to take a spin in my near-sentient car?”

“No. Just like I wouldn’t want to be in your near-sentient presence. Now ann eznak...or better still, men ghair eznak.” Then she turned and strode away.

He waited until she exited the room before moving. In moments, his far-longer strides overtook her at the elevators.

Kanza didn’t give any indication that she noticed him, going through messages on her phone. She still made no reaction when he boarded the elevator with her and then when he followed her to the garage.

It was only when he tailed her to her car that she finally turned on him. “What?”

He gave her his best pseudoinnocent smile and lobbed back her parting shot. “By your leave, or better still without it, I’m escorting you to your car.”

She looked him up and down in silence, then turned and took the last strides to a Ford Escape that was the exact color of her jacket. Seemed she was fond of red.

In moments, she drove away with a screech right out of a car chase, which had him jumping out of the way.

He stood watching her taillights flashing as she hit the brakes at the garage’s exit. Grinning to himself, he felt a rush of pure adrenaline flood his system.

She’d really done it. Something no other woman—no other person—had ever done.

She’d turned him down.

No...it was more that that. She’d rebuffed him.

Well. There was only one thing he could do now.

Give chase.

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